You may have heard a song on the radio called, Waterfalls. It’s sung by a group called TLC and the message they repeat in the song is “Don’t go chasing waterfalls.” It describes a kid who tries to find completeness/fulfillment by making money… and it describes another guy who becomes blinded by his temptations, again looking to be filled up… both stories end tragically.
Don’t go chasing waterfalls. That’s essentially what Dean has been talking about over the last couple weeks.
This is the last part of a series on Love, Lust and Loneliness. Over the last couple weeks, Dean spoke on Lust and Loneliness. Today, I’m completing the series and will talk about love.
Speaking of completing things… You’ve all likely noticed that the new overpass at College Drive and Circle Drive is now going up quickly. Did it drive anyone else crazy last year when you drove by the piles of dirt sitting there? We knew that they were making an overpass but nothing was happening. No machines, no activity. Isn’t it nice to see those machines working this year? There’s something about looking at something that is so obviously incomplete that is troubling to us.
How about when someone pours you a drink and they only fill it halfway? Or when you pull in behind someone in traffic who is going 40 in a 50 zone? Or see an artist start a painting but not finish it? A freshly cut lawn with a patch in the middle that was missed… It bothers us to see something stop short of what it’s supposed to become.
We generally notice things incomplete when we’re looking at the world around us. It’s usually a little harder to notice it in our own lives. It usually shows up subversively in things like loneliness or lust – and not only lust after sex. It shows up in lust after power or recognition or lust for $ or material things or relationships.
As I said, for the last couple weeks, Dean has been speaking to the reality of our lives being incomplete. He has spoken of loneliness and lust and how they are symptomatic of something in our lives… something telling us we aren’t there yet… something is leaving us thirsty for completeness. And it causes us to go and chase waterfalls.
I can remember being 5 days into my marriage – on my honeymoon – when I had that feeling like everything had come together. It was like I had been working on a puzzle for years and on this day I put down the last piece. It was a great day. Let me tell you about it... without all the details. Alyson and I were on the Island of Maui and on this day we decided we were going to go to the 7 Sacred Pools of Maui on the other side of the island. The road to these pools is notorious for car-sickness because of how it winds along the coast so I decided to rent a motorcycle – far less chance of getting sick on a bike – and this was just the excuse I needed. I rented the biggest, fattest Harley-Davidson I could find – it was beautiful. And off we went. The weather was perfect. We drove for a couple hours through rain-forests and then along beaches and beside cliffs and waterfalls. If you’ve driven a bike in SK, you’ve dreamed of a ride like this. There I am, driving this great machine through some of the earth’s most beautiful surroundings. I have my new bride – my best friend – sitting on the back of the bike enjoying it all with me. Then we arrive at the 7 pools where there are 7 waterfalls of mountain run-off running into each other before the water exits into the ocean. As a prairie boy I had always wanted to go to a place like this. We park the Harley, we find the biggest pool of water and we jump in. We swam and frolicked in the waterfalls as though we were on a cheesy romance movie… and then we made fun of each other for doing that. It was an amazing day… An amazing day filled with many things I had only dreamed of until then. It felt like things had come together.
Of course, you know that we aren’t still at the 7 pools and you would be right to assume that I had to take the Harley back. This is why we hate those cheesy romance movies… they end as though things are complete but we know they’re not. They ride into the sunset without acknowledging the rain in the forecast. They chase waterfalls, find them and stay there even when we know life isn’t like that. The picture isn’t complete and we know it. It wasn’t for Alyson and me. Although I felt like the puzzle had come together, we were really only beginning. It wasn’t the end of loneliness or lust or a number of other longings. We hadn’t arrived. Our journey was only beginning. We had some days even on our honeymoon when we wondered what was going on. Why didn’t we feel as complete as we thought we would?
One of the greatest dangers in our lives is what I felt at those waterfalls. There’s danger in the disillusionment related to our completeness or lack there of. We are easily tricked into believing we can be fulfilled this way or that. We’re all gullible when it comes to being fulfilled. Because many of us, much of the time are keeping our eyes open for something more, we take the bait when we shouldn’t. Late-night infomercials work because of this. Our desire for fulfillment blinds us and in some cases, destroys us. This is why Dean spoke directly regarding pornography last week. This is why AA has strict accountability around such thoughts. This is why we ask the people getting married at Lakeview why they are getting married.
We often go from one waterfall to the next… chasing illusions of fulfillment. We stuff ourselves with everything our culture prescribes until we’re numb with clutter and busy-ness. We stuff ourselves with anything that makes us feel alive. But death is often waiting for us under these waterfalls. It’s there in the “perfect” house or higher education or that more compatible relationship. Our culture offers us sedative after sedative to take the edge off our fractured lives: buy something, eat something, watch a movie, go on a holiday, get a better job, find romance or find new romance… There is a blanket of deception that we pull over ourselves every time we go down these roads. Most of these aren’t bad roads but our expectations can turn them dangerous.
And when we fill ourselves with the wrong solution we fall a little further into the trap – the cloud around us starts to feel ok.
Our hunger to be complete is more powerful than we know.
Today, I’m gonna propose three areas that require out attention in order for us to become complete.
I propose that completeness only happens when we recognize, receive and re-distribute the love of God.
Slide:
Becoming complete:
Recognizing, Receiving and Re-distributing the love of God.
The bible says that God is love.
I took the liberty to paraphrase J.I. Packer’s definition of God’s Love: “God’s love is an exercise of his goodness toward broken and lost people, whereby, having identified himself with their dilemma, he has given his life to save them, and now brings them to know and enjoy him.”
And if you look at his interactions with us through history, you can see that this is true. He is continually reaching to us, ever calling us, doing whatever he needs to do to be in relationship with us. In the New Testament book of Romans chapter 5, the writer Paul describes God’s love this way:
“And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit…” Romans 5:5
Packer says the word “pour” here is a small word with big meaning. He says this pouring is less like us pouring a glass of water and more like pouring of water we seeing falling over the cliffs at Niagara Falls. This is the one waterfall worth chasing.
To illustrate this path to completeness, I’m gonna use a couple rocks, a bowl and a funnel.
First, we have to recognize God’s love . Not as easy as it sounds. Many of us have been trained to notice the other things. How life is unfair, how we get the raw end of the deal and how our parade is always rained on.
As much as we hear about love and see pictures of it all around us, love seems elusive. It seems to be everywhere and nowhere. It’s at our fingertips but often just out of reach. We may need to train ourselves to see it.
God’s love shows up in the everyday, but seeing it takes our attention. It shows up in life’s details, in nature, in a nice meal, in the bible and even in the people around us… Take a look at this clip…
Love Actually Clip
Love actually is all around us. If you consider that God is the source of love, you see the effect of his love being poured down on us. The people at Heathrow Airport didn’t come up with the idea of love… they soaked that in from God’s waterfall whether they knew it or not. Take notice. Where is love showing up in your life?
That word “poured” out in Romans 5:5 suggests a free flow of God’s love – in fact, an inundation. As Packer says, this is “not talk of faint and fitful impressions, but of deep and overwhelming ones.” He goes on to say that “God is love to us – holy and powerful love – at every moment and in every event of every day’s life. Even when we cannot see the why and the wherefore of God’s dealings, we know that there is love in them and behind them, and so we can rejoice always, even when, humanly speaking, things go wrong.” J.I. Packer
If you put a jagged rock under a waterfall, it eventually becomes smooth. Where are you at? Are you aware of the water falling? Do you still have a few rough edges? I do. Maybe the edges are becoming smooth and we need to ask why.
Whether we see it or not, his love is pouring down on us, taking an edge off, here or there.
Recognizing God’s love is the first step down the path to becoming complete.
Second, we have to receive God’s love. This is the tough one. For some of us this is incredibly tough. Tough, because the only way we can receive God’s love is if we can also love ourselves. Some of us have never appraised ourselves as valuable. The two greatest commandments from Jesus were 1) Love God with all your heart, soul and strength and 2) Love your neighbor as yourself. Self-love is implied here. Not the diva kind but the kind where we look at ourselves through God’s eyes and agree with him, maybe by faith, on our value. And, believe me; your value is off the charts.
Dean explained a couple weeks ago that each of us was knit together by God, and that God made each of us wonderfully. He has set aside your DNA as unique. You have his fingerprints all over you.
Most of us see ourselves through our circumstances: our work, our roles, our relationships, our status. All of that is peripheral when God sizes you up. Imagine someone you value, just because. [PICTURE OF ELLA] I can easily go there with my 2 year old daughter Ella. Ella has no income, she doesn’t pull her weight with work at home, she treats other people poorly half the time, has no training or education – no marketable skills – she is unemployable. She drools on my books and she is unwilling to be potty-trained.
But all I see when I look at her is enormous value. I would do anything for her… regardless of whether she remained unemployable or in diapers. I play dolls with her because she likes dolls – I hate dolls. I’d sell all I have to help her. Nothing is too much for her as far as I’m concerned.
And that is exactly how God looks at you… incredible value for no other reason than that you are you – spots and blemishes and all. And until you begin to look at yourself through his eyes, you’ll continue to chase unfulfilling waterfalls. God doesn’t care about your hair or fashion sense. He doesn’t care about your education or your status in school or at the office. Sure, he’s interested in these things because you’re interested in them. But these things in no way affect the value he places on you. He’d do anything for you. He’s already done everything for you. He gave his life for you… so you could be in a position today to receive his love.
This is what Henry Nouwen said about this: He said, “Knowing God’s heart means consistently, radically, and very concretely to announce and reveal that God is love and only love, and that every time fear, isolation, or despair begins to invade the human soul, this is not something that comes from God. This sounds very simple and maybe even trite, but very few people know that they are loved without any conditions or limits.”
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for some time, you’ve likely been let down by love. Someone you’ve trusted, someone you love, someone who shouldn’t have let you down has let you down. Unfortunately, this is true of all our relationships with each other. I’d like to say that I haven’t let down my wife or my kids but I have and I will. Any love we are going to find from each other is going to have some shadows in it. After a few of these experiences, the thought of satisfying, completing love, starts to look like a fairy tale - a nice story but just a story. We begin to expect shadows instead of fulfilling love.
Well, I have good news for you today - Love from God has no shadows. He won’t break your trust. He won’t leave when you need him most. He won’t send platitudes when you take one on the chin. You might think, “no, I’m a bad person and he shouldn’t love me.” Well, that may be true – maybe you are a bad person… maybe you’re a good person. That has nothing to do with his love for you… it doesn’t change his love. He’s waiting for you to receive his love regardless. It’s scandalous. It’s amazing.
This is where the rock becomes a bowl. After that steady stream has poured down on the center of a rock long enough, the rock becomes dished-out in the center and it begins to hold water. Today might be the day when you need to start holding water… time to stop deflecting it and start receiving and holding his love for you.
There’s a great verse in the Old Testament. In Psalm 81:10 God says this: “Open wide your mouth and I will fill it.”
Becoming complete means we have to receive God’s love for us.
Third, we have to re-distribute God’s love.
Receiving God’s love is the tough one but re-producing his love is the one we become lazy with. But if we don’t do it, we aren’t going to become complete. We are made in God’s image and we’re only gonna be content when we act with him.
If you’ve gone to many weddings you’ve likely heard a common wedding passage read. 1 Corinthians 13 is called the “love” chapter of the bible. Let me read verses 4-8.
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hope, always perseveres.”
The problem is we usually read this passage wrong. We read it wrong because we want to go out and do what it says. We usually read it as a to-do list. Love is patient… so we think that we should be patient with one another. Love is not self-seeking… so we think we should put others first. At a wedding, the couple hears what love is and they conclude that they need to treat each other that way and if they do, their marriage will work. These are nice thoughts but we can’t really pull it off, nor were we intended to. The passage isn’t saying that we should love, it’s saying what love is. It’s not talking about doing, it’s talking about being.
You see in order to re-produce God’s love, we need to first become a bowl and receive it. Because just as a rock that sits under a steady stream of water becomes a bowl, that water hitting the center of it will eventually go through it, making it a funnel through the water passes. The goal is to have the love of God (which is pouring down on us) go right through us and in that way re-produce what God is pouring into us.
Love is a by-product of being with God. Just like liver-failure is the by-product of going to McDonalds too much. Just like sexual immorality is the by-product of uncontrolled lust. Love is a by-product of being with God.
We go wrong when we stop sitting under the waterfall with arms wide open, when we get lazy. Love is patient and love is not self-seeking… and when we sit under his waterfall long enough the thing that will come out of us is patience and unselfish motives. Our job isn’t to do love. It’s to receive his love so that it flows out of us. (We receive it by getting to know him and trusting him.)
There’s some good news in this: this means you can bring water to thirsty people. We believe that we are all ministers of God to one another – whether you’re a new Christ-follower or an old one, whether you’re educated or not, whether you’re male or female, young or old. We’re all ministers. As you open yourself to his love, you can be the conduit through whom he brings nourishment to the lonely, power to the weak, light to those in darkness. You can be refreshing water to friends, family, co-workers and even strangers who are without hope. You’re a rescue worker as much as an EMT or firefighter.
Nouwen said, “Knowing the heart of Jesus and loving him are the same thing… And when we live in the world with that knowledge, we cannot do other than bring healing, reconciliation, new life, and hope wherever we go.”
Knowing the heart of Jesus and loving him are the same thing. If you want help getting to know him, talk to one of us after or fill out a communication card and we’ll help you with that.
So, where are you? Are you a jagged rock being pelted by water but unaware? Are you a rock with its edges taken off, thankful but feeling unworthy? Are you a bowl drinking up the bounty and ready to start some pouring of your own? Maybe you’re a bowl sitting off to the side with stagnant water and it’s time to get under the waterfall again? Or are you a conduit, full of water and channeling fresh hope and life to those around you?
Gut check… are you chasing waterfalls that won’t satisfy? They’ll distract, they’ll numb us, they’ll sedate us but they won’t fill us.
The secret to becoming complete in our humanity has to do with God’s love. It’s the missing piece every time there is a missing piece. There may be other things we’d like in our lives ($, marriage, a better marriage, work, a new car, an education) but his love is the thing we need in our lives.
Are you chasing waterfalls or are you sitting under God’s waterfall with arms wide open?
His love is being poured out: recognize it. His love for you is real and powerful and greater than you can imagine: receive it – he thinks you’re worth it. You are made to share it: re-distribute his love.
Feeling fractured? Incomplete? Unfulfilled? Open up wide.
Let’s pray. |
